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>Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. >This kind of attack would be almost impossi

• garmaine 6y ago
  Banning... how?
  • yyyk 6y ago
    The entire thing relies on several things: nearly always-on connectivity, ability to convert to USD, crummy UX, and legit cover. A ban would do serious harm to 2, 3 and 4. If no one could pay legitimately and it would become (ever more) difficult to launder, the ransomware demands would die. The first (connectivity) could be impacted as well. What would happen when traffic shaping makes sync take longer and when every LN transaction risks losing money due to disconnections?
    • melq 6y ago
      I think the person you're responding to is how you would go about banning it in the first place, not necessarily why you would ban it.
      • garmaine 6y ago
        Yes that's what I meant (not sure why you were down-voted). Banning banks from doing business with bitcoin exchanges is not banning bitcoin. Banning use of bitcoin entirely is legally plausible, but technically impossible to implement without draconian internet censorship on the scale of China. It's a 100x harder to ban bitcoin than, say, bittorrent, and banning that in a free society ended up not being possible.
        • yyyk 6y ago
          Well, ensuring that no one sets up a Bitcoin network from their retrofitted computers in the privacy of their home is not banning Bitcoin, at least not a useful ban that we should care to enforce. If we can disrupt the network so that even criminals can't get ordinary people to 'pay' via the network, than it's for all practical purposes a ban. I don't agree that banning it is harder than bittorrent. It's dramatically easier. Bittorrent doesn't have global state, so there's no one place to strike. The entire Bitcoin network depends on global consensus, and therefore there is one place to strike. If it is weakened so that it shrinks enough (how many miners will want to mine for an illegal activity?), than 50%+1 attack will be trivial for a state actor.
    • zenexer 6y ago
      This isn’t a defense of Bitcoin. I’m often quite critical of cryptocurrency and believe the world would be better off without it. However, “banning” it won’t have the effects you’ve described, and you seem have some misunderstandings about how Bitcoin works, especially as it pertains to the criminal world. 1. Bitcoin transactions don’t require access to the internet at the time the transaction takes place. There have been solutions for performing offline transactions, though none have really taken off. Nevertheless, it’s not hard to do, though it’s riskier for the recipient than an online transaction. I won’t go into the technical details, but it’s nothing fancy. The idea is that you can place money in any number of accounts ahead of time, then simply pay people by handing them the keys to those accounts. There’s little overhead for creating new accounts; often merchants will use a fresh account for every transaction. Of course, the recipient has to be able to trust that they’re actually receiving keys to an account with the right amount of currency, which is a harder problem to solve. 2. This isn’t necessary. Bitcoin was popular in certain criminal communities long before there was any easy way to convert between Bitcoin and fiat. Cashing out dirty Bitcoin to USD remains risky. 3. The UX is already terrible. The UX that criminals experience isn’t the same UX that investors experience. They can’t use services like Coinbase to cash out. 4. Prior to Bitcoin going mainstream, the cover was that you could exchange your Bitcoin for various illegal products and services. (Want to buy a stolen car?) When there’s a whole underground economy whose participants are thoroughly convinced they are outside the reach of the law, any currency will work, as long as there’s a consensus within that community. Banning cryptocurrency would have some interesting effects, but it would be nearly impossible to enforce, and it wouldn’t have the impact you’re seeking.
      • yyyk 6y ago
        1. Passing keys around risks the original sender (or anyone listening in) grabbing the money after 'payment', and voids any guarantees Bitcoin etc. might be able to make - the transaction isn't even listed on the chain. This would turn a 'trustless blockchain' to a 'non-blockchain relying on trust'. Assuming this transition can even be done (what would be the point of cryptocurrency in that case?), the result would be like the known hawala networks, which at least do not enable so much criminal activity and have some decent uses. 2,4. Bitcoin had an aura around it. Something experimental not really concerned with money or big crime, maybe a way to buy light drugs. Later on as a magnet for speculation. Remove the official cover, and laundering would become way more difficult. 3. There's terrible UX, and there's 'terrible horrible UX when one could easily lose money because the ISP closes your lightening connection'. So I think this is possible to enforce, not completely, but there's no need for 100% enforcement to have a positive effect.
  • Larrikin 6y ago
    Bitcoin is only useful currently when it can be turned into cash. There are no real businesses that don't turn their payments into a taxable national currency at the end. If you just ban exchanges in a few dominant countries btc is effectively useless as a hold of value and you're back to convincing the pizza guy to accept 30 coins for one pizza and other one off transactions
    • garmaine 6y ago
      That doesn't really have any impact on the situation being discussed, though. Criminals are still more than happy to accept bitcoin.
    • albuic 6y ago
      If you give me 30 bitcoins I will even give you a free pizza and deliver them almost anywhere. Joke appart, it is effectively useless for now but some places are now accepting it which means that the usefulness might change sooner than we expect. It doesn't mean the seller won't be able to locate you with the address for the delivery though. Real problem will be if they use Monero or some real anonymous cryptocurrency where fungability is respected.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• kortilla 6y ago
  Not sure how you arrived at a negative value. Or are you suggesting there is no positive use-case that could offset it?
  • yyyk 6y ago
    I'm just looking at how it is currently used. If after all these years there isn't a positive use-case to offset it, there might not be one at all.
    • microcolonel 6y ago
      That's because you live in a country with a functioning currency.
      • yyyk 6y ago
        I keep hearing that, but I am not familiar with any data that shows actual widespread use by common people* in those countries without a functional currency. Most of these countries barely have a stable internet connection or even stable electrical power, so I wouldn't surprised if these 'currencies' aren't so helpful in practice. * Note that use by corrupt politicians to launder their ill-gotten gains is not a positive.
        • mareko 6y ago
          It's true that Bitcoin is a poor medium of exchange: it's not stable, has slow transaction times, does not work well with mobile devices, and has intimidating identifiers, but it did open the door to new ideas that will likely soon have a huge impact on exactly the uses you're describing.
          • arp242 6y ago
            I feel like I've been hearing this for over 5 years. I hope it materializes, but to be honest it's hard to not be skeptical, not in the least because a lot of the original values of Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies seem to have been subverted by certain people to serve their own needs (which ... is what usually happens if there are no rules to set boundaries).
• NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  We need to make laws in western countries that paying off these kinds of ransoms is illegal. It gives money to criminal elements and only encourages this. I also thought it would be possible for powerful law enforcement groups to follow the bitcoins even through exchanges. Why does this not run into the worldwide hunt for the perpetrators?
  • vkou 6y ago
    It's theoretically possible for powerful state-level adversaries to follow bitcoins through tumblers and exchanges (If they operate the former). Also, at some point, you're going to have to be paying rent, so you'll need to turn your BTC into dollars or pezos or pieces of eight, and may need to explain to your friendly tax authorities how you can by 4.5 million USD worth of BTC. In practice, though, it's not clear what exactly are the capabilities of each branch of law enforcement.
    • jdietrich 6y ago
      In a lot of jurisdictions, your friendly tax authorities won't ask or care; international fraud is a valuable source of foreign currency for many countries as long as you're reasonably discreet about it. Banks and payment processors can't afford to be nearly as blasé, because they're at far greater risk of facing international sanctions; Bitcoin provides an essential layer of obfuscation and deniability.
      • garmaine 6y ago
        In the US for example, there's an actual field in your 1040 tax return for entering income from otherwise undeclared illegal businesses. Putting your drug or extortion money there and paying taxes is not admitting guilt and can't be used against you IIRC.
        • jobigoud 6y ago
          What does one gain by doing this? Is there a particular incentive apart from one's own principles?
• kerkeslager 6y ago
  > Just wanted to make this same point - right now, cryptocurrency has negative value for society. Perhaps this is a justification for banning the current implementations. Ehhhh, I think the overall impact of Bitcoin is negative, but the "democratizing large-scale crime" argument is a pretty poor argument for why that is. First, Bitcoin isn't "democratizing" anything good or bad--people need to stop using this word with regard to Bitcoin. But assuming you mean something along the lines of "enabling", or "empowering", I'm not sure that the shift in computer hacking crime which is caused by Bitcoin is actually negative. Prior to Bitcoin, the people who paid for poor security were consumers whose data, money, and time were stolen. In theory if an entity exposes your data, you can sue them, but in reality, data breaches are common and when entities actually get sued, they rarely pay out significantly. I've followed the Equifax case every step of the way for years and still haven't received a dime, and I doubt many people would follow through all the hoops they've put in place--I'm mostly doing it out of curiosity at this point. That still happens, but more and more, ransomware's biggest targets are large entities which should have secured their services better. Not only does ransomware punish the entities who should have prioritized security, not the consumers, it also makes it public knowledge whose security is lax. Now there are a lot of complexities here. In theory, ransomeware hackers could also sell the data--but as far as I know that doesn't happen much, probably because they rely on the "honest crook" effect to ever get paid. And sometimes ransomware is employed against individuals. And to be clear, I'm not endorsing ransomeware attacks. I'm just saying this looks like harm reduction to me: if a big business is going to not prioritize security and get hacked, then I'd rather they pay a ransom than have user's private data sold on the darkweb. In a more just system, that's just the fines they'd be paying anyway.
  • yyyk 6y ago
    What harm reduction happens when the 'large entities' are the courts[0], municipalities[1] or even hospitals[2]? Alleged better safeguarding of our data* isn't worth it. * I suspect that right now companies find it cheaper to pay than to improve their security. [0] https://wtop.com/national/2020/05/texas-high-courts-hit-by-ransomware-attack-refuse-to-pay/ https://wtop.com/national/2020/05/texas-high-courts-hit-by-r... [1] https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/municipality-ransomware-attacks-2019/ https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/municipalit... [2] https://www.wwnytv.com/2020/07/28/western-ny-hospital-recounts-ransomware-experience-smc-deals-with-malware-attack/ https://www.wwnytv.com/2020/07/28/western-ny-hospital-recoun... https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/11/us/alabama-hospital-ransomware-attack/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/11/us/alabama-hospital-ranso...
• vmception 6y ago
  Bug bounties rising to their actual market price is not a negative value for society.
  • spurdoman77 6y ago
    Market price? Interesting way to put it. You could say that the ransomware issuer has a monopoly to the data and will price it to the level where the company owners have higher return paying and continuing it than closing the company down.
    • vmception 6y ago
      its two order of magnitude better than the unilateral pricing set by companies to their white hack programs, which white hat people have to fight for.
  • istjohn 6y ago
    By your logic, bank robbers are simply a manifestation of market forces. What did you expect to happen with all that cash in one place with no armed guards?
    • vmception 6y ago
      That analogy only works if banks were paying people to pretend to rob them all day every day and show them how they did it, and also underpaying them. so, no.
      • daveevad 6y ago
        Bank Secretary : So, people hire you to break into their places... to make sure no one can break into their places? Martin Bishop : It's a living. Bank Secretary : Not a very good one.
      • istjohn 6y ago
        Actually, you're making my point for me. Banks don't typically hire physical pen testers at all, and yet our reaction to a bank robbery is not, "Well, that's just what you get for not taking security seriously." Nor is that our reaction when a gas station gets held up. In a perfect world, everyone can be trusted, and we don't need locks on our doors or passwords on our phones. In a dystopia, everyone has to carry a gun or have a bodyguard to leave their fortified homes, and a quarter of GDP goes towards security measures. We're somewhere in the middle, but things like this push us a little further down the road to more sunk costs in security measures. A locksmith might make a killing after a local crime wave, but they should understand that crime is bad for the neighborhood regardless. Cyber crime raises demand for white hat services, but what's good for white hats is not necessarily good for society at large.
• jey 6y ago
  How do you know that? Are you judging based on a representative sample of all uses of cryptocurrency, or the uses you hear about?
  • yyyk 6y ago
    If there are any large scale positive uses of cryptocurrency, I'm sure that we would have heard of them by now; The proponents would have shouted them from the rooftops. That said, proponents do have a shot at enlightening us (me and other viewers of the thread). What large scale positive application are you aware of?
    • jey 6y ago
      The main one I know of is international money transfers (remittances). Usually these have to go through an oligopoly that sets the fees and exchange rates to be favorable to itself. This is the kind of market that's pretty big on the international scale, but it's completely boring and non-sensational to read about a bunch of people who are sending $400 to their moms on a regular basis.
      • yyyk 6y ago
        As far as I know, nearly everyone uses Western Union (Transferwise etc. etc.) for that. Bitcoin is too costly* and complicated for most people. * Two set of fees to exchange crypto to fiat + transfer fee compared to one set of fiat currency exchange + transfer fee.
        • ehmish 6y ago
          I recall these services used to be pretty crap, bitcoin added a bit of much needed competition
        • icelancer 6y ago
          BTC is not the only cryptocurrency used there. I've sent LTC and XRP most often, but XMR lately. tx fees need not be large (also Lightning Network exists).
• rossjudson 6y ago
  Speculative holding of Bitcoin is the answer to a simple question: "How do I profit from crime, without doing crime?"
• apta 6y ago
  > right now, cryptocurrency has negative value for society It's hard to say. The current fiat system, due to predatory and parasitic practices such as the inherent interest involved in working with it, and how the government is able to control inflation at will, is absurd.